


The Violence of Being Alive

by mythomagicallydelicious



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Starvation, Implied/Referenced Temporary Character Death, Isolation, Referenced violence, Self-Doubt, The Clay family - Freeform, a few metaphors, and comfort, and he possibly made himself sick, animal death in the first couple paragraphs, blood mention, caduceus is sick..., caduceus' past, dead people tea, ft. my headcanons for the names of his other family members, so I'm embracing it and running with it, tal mentioned a death ritual on talks once?, visions inside of dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 00:50:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21329509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythomagicallydelicious/pseuds/mythomagicallydelicious
Summary: Sometimes you have to feel your feelings to get through them. Sometimes you have to feel them violently. It's in human nature, Caduceus realizes, after going through the process of self-destruction and coming out the other side with new hope.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 79





	The Violence of Being Alive

Nature is violent, Caduceus thinks, as he hears a howl from beyond the fence of his sanctuary. He stills and listens, and can just make out the distant pounding of paws against packed earth. The snarls of a large creature on the hunt. There’s a panicked panting nearby and in the silence that has overtaken his corner of the Grove, he can hear a bleat of fear that turns into cries of distress. And just under that, he can hear teeth sink into flesh and tear, rend, scrap, _ devour _ the prey it has found. 

Slowly the sound picks up again where he is standing. A frog hops through the grass at his feet, and beetles hum in the air around him. Nature is violent, Caduceus thinks, as he watches the frog hop up a rock and capture a fly. It hops away and into the gnarled encroaching vines atop the outer fence, and is caught in the sharp talons of a hawk as it hunts. 

He blinks, long and slow, and turns his head. His hair tickles the back of his neck as it parts and falls to the side. It is heavy, and for a moment he thinks he will let his neck bend and follow the weight of it down, down, until he is lying on the ground. Like a sapling burdened with snow. 

Caduceus lets his shoulders slump and tilt, his neck curving as he ducks his head below a branch, allowing the gravity to pull him down a moment, a branch threatening to break. He keeps his head down as he steps between the wild grass and wild flowers and wild graves, checking that all below him is still in order. Trusting himself to know the path even if he does not see it.

Bending lower, feeling his hair fall completely to the right, a pink curtain blocking the temple from view, he feels his muscles ache as if he has run a very long distance. A smile twitches on his lips. He does not run, much, and he has never traveled far enough to warrant the ache he thinks he feels, now. His fingers close around the walking stick he was reaching for. Wood gnarled yet smooth. Many in his family had a hand in carving wood, a way to pass time and to learn to create and, at the least, a temporary grave marker for those who do not stay to see the stone raised in commemoration. 

He pulls himself up, both hands grasping, white-knuckled and straining as he stands back to his full height, fighting the pull on him to lay down in the garden and rest. 

As he turns, leaning on his staff, pushing his hair behind one ear, he spies a youngling of some kind of burrowing, fuzzy beast. Very small, very round, very unprotected. He has no time to figure out what it is before he sees the jaws rise up on either side and strike it, then swallow it whole, and slither away. 

Nature is equally violent to all, he thinks, as his stomach rumbles. He walks around to the backside of the temple, and checks the growth of the mushrooms he knew would be there. 

Very poisonous, the patch behind the temple. Eating more than two can kill a firbolg. He remembers watching one of his sisters complete her ritual with the patch behind the temple. Eating smaller portions, or cooking them, causes extreme sickness and associated symptoms, but one can still be recovered. Eating them raw is what results in death. Caelan had spent a week testing their limits before finishing three raw mushrooms from that patch. His mother had performed the raising and not long after his sister spoke of a vision, and a mission. 

They are so strangely colored, and quite lovely. It’s nice to look at, so Caduceus does not interfere in its growth. He must remind himself not to harvest too many from it when winter comes and they stay standing, despite harsh winds and cold snaps that last and last. 

His knees knock together as he continues, and he thinks of a time when he was much younger, much shorter. A man had come to the temple, shouting, raging, knocking on the door and the walls and throwing his fist to his father’s chest in a wild passion. Caduceus and his siblings had not been told to hide or to look away. Grief was a natural part of death, for the living. Grief was a natural part of life.

Grief belongs to humanity by nature, and by the gods, was that nature _ violent _, Caduceus thinks. His father had held the arms of the man in his own, largely outsizing him. The man convulsed in his arms, yelling and striking out at him, demanding something lost to time and the slight haze over particular memories that Caduceus can’t parse. 

Eventually his aunt Corrin had calmed the man, the knocks he gave to his father growing weaker and weaker until they stopped completely. Caduceus’ knees knocked like that now, weak and with no vigor. Exhausted. 

The man had cried in his father’s arms, face hidden and ashamed. Caduceus remembers the compassion in his father’s eyes as he consoled the man. Caduceus also remembers the bruises on his father’s chest, and the old wound that had reopened on his father’s shoulder under the man’s blows. Where the blood spattered on the ground, later grew a lovely cluster of pink flowers. Two of his sisters had taken them and braided them into Caduceus’ hair for him, later. 

After the man had been on his way and his father had hugged them all to his chest. A kiss on the cheek and a moment of stillness and peace in an otherwise excitable day.

Caduceus reaches the grave site of an old dwarvish family. He taps the earth with his staff once. He stares at the earth for a moment, expectant. 

_ Oh _, Caduceus thinks as he taps the earth again, saying a quiet prayer of growth. Spells work better once you cast them, he thinks. From the life already there, a few new buds sprout from the ground, growing more rapidly than the natural order. It is almost violent, how it bursts from the earth. Dirt displaced, nutrients absorbed, life given and taking up space as soon as it is able. Pushing aside roots of established plants.

Caduceus kneels, one hand gripping his staff with all his strength, while the other makes the practiced motions of pulling the ripe flower from the ground, extracting the elements that will make an excellent brew in an hour or so. This family gives tea that provides the feeling of a filling meal. A hearty portion, thick and warm in his belly.

He tucks them into his tunic and stands, both hands around the staff and straining as he is towering once more. His head is light and for a moment he is sure he sees a few stars color his vision. He closes his eyes and listens to the world around him. The wind blows through the trees and he hears a few rustle and fall, landing softly. There is bird song and chatter flowing through the air around him. A quick bustle of wings and a creak of a branch as they take flight and land and take flight and land and take flight and land and--

At the edge of his hearing, almost in the space where dreams and reality mix, to where one can’t tell up from down or real from imagination, he _ thinks _ he can hear the vines growing, creeping, snarling and trapping and killing the forest slowly. He thinks he can hear the woods turn purple, can feel the poison dripping from the vines and into the trees, turning pure sap to purple blood and choking the life from everything around him. It is more than violence, it is _ malicious _ and _ intent _. 

He keeps his eyes closed as he leans on his staff, ears twitching slightly and nose lifting to sniff the air. Autumn is coming to the Grove, soon. The Grove has been in Autumn for years. Winter is on its way, and his family has still not returned with a cure for its deadly grasp.

A cough wracks Caduceus’ body and his eyes startle open. The light-headedness remains but he adjusts his grip on his staff and walks forward, back into the main part of the Grove. He stoops to gather fallen branches on his way, dry kindling. The earth calls to him each time he leans forward, and each time he must white-knuckle his way back up, shoulders hunching further. He wishes his hair were not so heavy. 

He wishes there were little pink flowers braided into it, by little hands (though they were bigger than his) that quietly pat his shoulder as they work, and sing a sweet little song as they do so to soothe all as they think about the day they’ve had. He wishes he could remember the words to the song. 

He kneels once more, arranging the wood into a neat pile, set atop the ashes of many fires that have come before. He sets to sparking a flame and it appears. It dances before him, devouring the wood he has offered it. Feeding the fire and steadying the flames. As he stares he curls his fingers through the sheet of hair that has fallen over his shoulder again. He tugs until he feels the slight pull on his scalp, not enough to hurt. Just enough to feel. He thinks of how hair burns just as well as wood, and sometimes will start a fire faster. 

He tugs slightly harder, feeling his fingers catch on a tangle, combing through it as he stares. It hurts, in a far off way. It hurts like a weak blow to the chest that catches you by surprise--it did not hurt, but you still say _ ow _ because it was unexpected. A few strands come away in his fingers as he pulls his hand away. Vibrant pink, perhaps the most alive part of him, at the moment. His nose twitches and he lays the errant strands across the small cooking fire, giving it a treat. 

He pulls from beneath the hollow stone bench to the side of the cooking spit, a teapot, and one cup. Chipped, old, but sturdy. Well, sturdy enough to do the job. The cracked and repaired set had many missing pieces by this day, but Caduceus thought it gave the remains of it character. There was a story behind every missing plate and cup and repaired handle. There is life, here.

He prepares the tea of the dwarvish family’s gravesite. It is bland, but filling. Caduceus’ hand shakes slightly as he pulls the kettle off the fire and pours it into his cup. A bit splashes on the ground, and he watches a curious beetle drink its fill.

Caduceus sits in silence, swaying in the cooling breeze as it winds its way through the Grove around him. He sips his tea and gives thanks to the Wildmother for the provision out of habit. He stares out, down the path, shoulders hunched and leaning in towards the fire. The warmth licks at his chin, at his chest. A shiver races over his shoulders and he folds his legs across his lap, leaning as close to the warmth as he can. He feels his vision blur and swim and he does not blink or shake his head to regain clarity. 

Caduceus does not know how long he sits there, head pounding and the wind chilling him to the bone even as the fire seems to set him alight, burning his face and neck and chest. He goes to take a sip of tea and finds it empty. The pot is empty, and a small collection of beetles have gathered at the edges of little pools where he had shaken and splashed it out of his cup. 

His teeth chatter against his will, jaw shaking like the rest of him, now, as he goes to pull the poisonous mushroom from within his tunic. He sets it into the spit over the fire, feeding it spare sticks in a pile hidden below the hollow bench. 

It is evening, the sun sinking lower on the horizon. The tops of the sickly purple trees reach for it hungrily in Caduceus’ eyes, wanting to take it over and devour the sun, turn it poisonous and malicious like the rest of the wood. He watches it be pulled down to rest, to be devoured, to be turned cold. Nature is violently keeping its cycles in check, tugging the sun out of the sky and throwing the moons up, ignorant of the cries for the warmth of the sun, the protection of its rays, the fear of the dark and what night brings.

It is harder to remember he is hungry when he is sick, Caduceus thinks, as he eyes the mushroom he roasted. He remembers Caelan shivering and weak, but still standing after four days of testing their potency. She had refused food, claiming a lack of hunger. Caduceus glanced blearily around him. There was not much food for him to gather, anyway. 

Caduceus also remembers her words growing strange, a little funny, a little unlike herself. A small price to pay, in completing their rituals, Caduceus thinks. That was the last family member to die by food. Everyone else chose some sort of physical damage, more immediate. 

Maybe his was too quick, Caduceus thinks. Perhaps that is why his vision was not long, why the Wildmother chose not to send him, yet. Maybe that was why he was left alone for so long. 

Caduceus coughs again, and it forces him bent double, face to the ground. A spatter of something warm hits his hand, and he sees blood on his palm. He sighs, and wipes it on the ground a few spaces away from the fire. He feels something warm on his cheek and he lifts his bloody hand to inspect it. He licks his finger and tastes salty-something.

Doubt is violence, he thinks. He bends to hold his head in his hands as the tears fall down his face. Doubt is inherent in humanity, and it is natural, and all of it is violence. To be alive is to face violence, and to partake in it, and to perpetuate it on and on.

He fills his hands with salty-something and he coughs and he shakes and he cannot look up to the moon. He cannot look to nature, right now, where he knows his goddess rests and creates and continues despite his doubts.

He stays there until his tears are dried and his sniffles have quieted and the pounding in his head has gotten better and worse at the same time. He picks up his staff and puts his entire body in the effort to stand, bent double at the waist, still, stomach clutching at itself. He shuffles to the side, casting decompose over the site of his blood. He turns and slowly works his way into the temple.

Though built of stone and strong to the elements, there are parts that are open air and more nature than building. He seeks the holy place his father came to pray alone, to pray for his children, to pray for the forest, and the graves, and for whatever else was on his father’s mind. An open window the size of a wall, the low stone barrier to the outside at knee height, overgrown with vines and flowers and a special flower Cornelius presented Constance to express his love and affection. A rare beauty, that has survived despite all the odds and the infrequent attention. 

Caduceus collapses gracelessly. His muscles ache and his head pounds harder. He speaks aloud to the flowers, to the ground, to the air in this special room, the inner arboretum. He speaks his doubts aloud and he speaks his loneliness and he yells in a voice that hasn’t spoken in _ months _ besides to mutter a spell and it is cracked and it _ hurts _ and it is _ violent _ when he speaks.

He digs his fingers into the dirt and his eyes start to well again and he cannot stand and face his future, this liminal space of waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for the sickness of the forest to overtake him, if it hasn’t already. Waiting for word to come home, for another cup in his tea set to be used. Waiting for the grief-stricken to strike him and waiting for someone to impart a lesson about what life and death means and the balance the Wildmother creates for the world.

And when he has spoken everything in radical honesty, in truth so hard it _ hurts _ to say, he feels a warm breeze flow from the window and stir his hair back from his forehead. He is shaking, still, but the breeze seems to whisper a prayer of healing, of restoration, words he recognizes and repeats on instinct, and he feels life flood back into his veins. Sickness is purged from him and a vitality he hasn’t felt in years returns to him. 

The breeze shifts and he turns his head to it, feeling it dry the tear tracks on his face, whispering a new incantation that he repeats, a blind trust in his cracked voice.

And then he falls into a deep sleep, collapsing once more.

In his sleep, he is in the garden of the Blooming Grove. Beside him are his sisters, smiling, tending to what food they are able to grow. His brothers turn and smile at him from where they are carving a new headstone, delicate and strong, working in tandem. He stands, and he feels strength in his legs and he does not lean on his walking stick, though he carries it. He runs his fingers over the knots worn down by his uncle, an adept carver. 

He sees his aunt preparing a large meal, with a couple of cousins assisting her. Spices fill the air as they cook, and he recognizes the sight and smells as a day of celebration. Some sort of early autumnal holiday, between the shifting of seasons. He hears singing and he turns once more, finding his singing a song to honor the Wildmother as she weaves together a series of new sun hats, good to wear on the long days out in the Garden. He nods his head along to the cadence and smiles brighter, feeling love well up inside of him as he sees his family all around him. 

He hears his father call for him, and he runs behind the temple, eager to see him. There he stands, next to the bed of poison mushrooms, weeding the patch. His legs burn from the short sprint he’d done, as he kneels beside his father. 

He says nothing as he starts to pull up the weeds with him. His father turns and smiles at the help, pats a hand on his back, tucks a strand of pink hair behind his ear. But then he turns again and continues tending the patch. Cornelius was known for his compassion for all who came to the Blooming Grove, and all that grew there. Including the dangerous parts. His father had been fastidious in ensuring the life of the wild, violent, beautiful nature around them. 

When they finish, they stand, and go around back to the front of the house. Caduceus finds he can’t quite speak, but he listens to his sisters telling jokes and his brothers re-enacting something he’d missed earlier in the day. He laughs with them and smiles and he feels the love his family has for each other. His aunt and his cousins bring out the plates and they all sit to eat. His mother makes the tea, and it is perfect. More perfect than any memory he can conjure up when he is awake. His mother who taught him to make tea and to learn how to read when the steam is enough or the temperature is right. How important patience and waiting and perception is for making a masterful pot of tea for your friends.

His mother pours, his father serves, and they all sit outside together, he listens to their voices overlap and the warm wind blow through and around them. The voices meld and overlap and the wind blows through his hair and the images of his family flicker and change, going from memory to memory of times they shared. The images convey words to Caduceus’ mind as he watches it all, mute.

_ My son, my loyal cleric, you have not been abandoned. They are always here, in your heart, and your dreams. And I am with you, always. _

Caduceus feels the weight of the words sink into his chest like a stone. He doesn’t want to look away from the scene before him, in case it disappears. Still, he looks up to the sky, and the trees of the forest are not purple and sick, but vibrant greens, reds, oranges, and browns, healthy autumnal. They bend and sway in the wind, and the branches almost bend in a way that looks like a body, the leaves like a cascading waterfall of hair, the trunks seeming to close space and become a single entity.

Caduceus glances back at his family, then back to the woman of the woods. He has never felt the draw to leave for the woods. Just to be at peace with his surroundings, and live with those he knows. He doesn’t know what to say.

Again the images of his family flickers, and the wind brushes over him again, stirring his sleeves while he remains still. His family’s images change and flicker like the tongues of flame he’d watched in the cooking fire. Captivating, unable to look away, and familiar. He sees images of them going through their death rites, picking the method of their death, dying, and watching them come back through the power of the Wildmother. He sees their wounds heal and their eyes open with wonder and pain warring for the first thing they acknowledge.

He sees them gush about their visions, of the mission each felt led to leave on. He sees their goodbyes, the careful packing of supplies and small gifts they could give as each left. Caduceus saw himself gift a-many-times repaired tea cup to each member as they left, until only he and his four-cup set remained. 

He looks back to the forest and he wonders why he never received a call to leave. He was passionate about his home, but he had never felt the drive to investigate, nor a divine influence to leave.

The wind and the images fly together, the voices of his family growing and then fading and the new voice seems to whisper to him again.

_ How do you know when you have made a perfect cup of tea? Is it in knowing the exact time you have waited? Or in the satisfaction after your patience is rewarded in the first sip? _

He sees his mother teach him how to be patient, and not rush the art of tea making. He remembers hours upon hours of learning the tricks and tells of each and every flower in the Grove, and how to prepare and estimate when the tea is ready.

_ Your time to run is coming. Your patience and dedication are inspiring, my child. One day, you will leave home and investigate what has caused the sickness within the Savalirwood. I trust your judgement to know the right moment of action, and not a moment before. Like a perfect cup of tea. _

Caduceus walks to the edge of the first wall. He leverages himself over it, no longer worried about the vines that usually snarl and entangle. There is nothing there. He walks to the second gate and passes through unhindered. He approaches the woman speaking through the trees, but pauses before he leaves the property of the Blooming Grove completely.

He glances back and sees the front yard empty, save for the grave stones. He kneels, bowing his head in reverence to his goddess. He apologizes to her, looking away from her image.

_ Caduceus, _ he hears, and the power and love enveloped in that one word is enough to make him sob. So he does. The impression of a voice softens further and he feels the warm wind gently lift his chin to look at her.

_ Caduceus Clay, of the Clays, honored family and keeper of my temple, do not despair. Your path may be long, but you have the strength to persevere. And when you feel faint, call on my name, in my power, and healing will be brought. Keep your faith as you have kept it all these years, and remember to be honest with yourself. I trust you to know when is the right moment to act. You have my blessing and my call to action, to follow in the footsteps of the Clays. _

Caduceus knows he has salty-something pouring from his eyes again, but he does not feel shame. He feels love swell in his heart, as well as hope. 

His vision fades as he stands again. The warm wind sways and the branches sway with it, dissipating the image of the women within them. He turns and heads back to the garden, vision narrowing and the sound of laughter and song and all those he loves surrounding him, cocooning him as he falls deeper into sleep.

When Caduceus awakes next, he stands, rubbing dirt from his face and feeling remarkably well-rested for having slept in a heap on the floor. He stretches, and for once he feels no ache in his joints or pull in his muscles. Except for a slight twinge in his calves, as if he had gone for a jog the night before, he feels amazingly well. His stomach feels full, and it is that realization that brings back the dream he had the night before. And the visions.

He speaks, and his voice, which should be hoarse from yelling his voice out, is healed, not sore at all. He bends to pick up his walking stick and he doesn’t feel the fatigue wash over him, or entice him to lay down and not stand back up. 

He smiles, and heads to the room he has dedicated most of his few possessions to. He carefully mends his pack, finding holes and casting over them, watching them reform seamlessly. He marks each healed patch with a bit of pink lichen, to remember what was there before. 

  
He turns and packs his few tunics and pants, ensuring they are all patched. He fetches the spare waterskin and fills it in the hot spring, setting it beside his pack. He sits outside that day, finding the perfect bark to carve a small figurine of the Wildmother’s symbol, just as Caractacus had shown all of them, and carved for them before they left on their journeys. 

He cleans the shield he has not used in many years, made by one of his dear sisters. He hums one of the songs he heard in his dream as he does so, the words slowly coming back to him. He creates or restores other small symbols of hope and love his family had gifted each other for years, as each left on their journeys.

When he is done, he gathers the good tea from the Castella family, the textile family long ago, and brews it, just as he was shown. His hands do not tremor when he removes the kettle from the spit, and pours himself a cup. He sits, and waits, taking a sip and sighing in satisfaction. 

He listens to nature move around him, pleased to be of it and a part of it. Birds call out to one another. He watches a brown fox dart across the grounds with a stolen chick in its mouth. Nearby a frog eats a fly and another fly and another fly. It hops into some tall grass and disappears. Nature is as it always is. 

Caduceus waits. The next day he weeds the poison mushroom patch, but he refuses to eat from it again. He throws out and casts decompose on the one he had roasted and saved, back on top of the patch. It already started sprouting new little poison mushrooms.

He bathes in one of the hot springs, washing his hair and feeling a deep layer of grime slough off of him. The gritty feeling of wrong-footedness and sickness left as well, making him feel lighter than he has in a while. 

When he steps up out of the spring, he combs through his hair with his fingers, thinking about that song again, trying to get the tangles out. He pulls it all over to one side of his head, and begins braiding as he walks to the front, a fresh pot of tea steeping as he’d gone to bathe. Sitting, braiding, he sees a new little patch of wildflowers. Vibrant pink, all clustered one on top of the other. He gives a small smile as he leans forward, carefully plucking them from the ground, and weaving them into his braid. 

Somewhere a human shoots a deer, an eagle kills a fish, a dwarf kills an elf. Somewhere flowers bloom and old friends meet again by chance and the sun shines warmly on a clear day. Caduceus Clay thinks about how nature is violent, but it doesn’t have to be defined by its violence. Life is more than just cycles of violence until death. There is beauty hiding in plain sight. In a hopeful thought. In a patch of wildflowers. In a perfect cup of tea.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Caduceus Clay with my whole entire heart, and honestly the eighteen or so years he was left by himself in the Blooming Grove fascinate me. I want to explore that space and where his head was at in different points of time. I'd wager this was about 2 years since the last people came to ask for help with a burial, and maybe 8-10 years before the Mighty Nein ask for his help. It's a lot of time to be alone, and lonely to top it all off.
> 
> Thank you for reading!! Comments/Kudos appreciated :D 
> 
> As always, please let me know if I missed a tag. Have a wonderful day, thanks!
> 
> P.S.- how does Matt do the descriptions of the Wildmother's visions so well?? Please give me your wisdom, Mercer, I need it for fic, lol


End file.
